Creating a texture within the Hypershade editor

Learning Resources > Tutorials > Getting Started with Maya > Rendering > Lesson 2: Shading surfaces >

To mimic the skin of an orange, you will add a bump map texture. A bump map creates the illusion that the surface has bumps or other types of surface relief. You will map the texture using the Create Bar in Hypershade.

The Create Bar is similar to the Create Render Node window you have used already. It is built into Hypershade for greater convenience.

Create Render Node appears at the top, by default. Next to the heading is an arrow icon. If you click this icon, you switch to the Create mental ray Nodes mode. In this case, leave the Create Maya Nodes selection turned on.

The Mayakist logo file texture is a 2D texture, which wraps evenly around the surface. Next, you create a 3D texture. A 3D texture is for making objects appear to have been carved out of a solid substance, such as marble or wood.

To create a bump texture within the Hypershade Editor

In the Create bar, scroll down to the 3D Textures heading.
For this bump effect, you use a Brownian 3D texture. Experience has shown that a Brownian texture is the best texture for approximating the bumps on an orange skin. Becoming skillful with textures is a matter of observation, experimentation, and experience.
With the middle mouse button, drag the Brownian texture (under 3D Textures) onto the Orange material swatch in the Work Area tab and release the mouse button.
From the menu that appears, choose bump map.
Maya connects or applies Brownian to the Orange material’s bump map attribute.

The pop-up menu shows a list of common material attributes. Although you can map textures to any material attribute, these are the most commonly mapped attributes.

By default, you can assign only one texture per attribute. Attributes that already have an assigned texture appear in italics. (For a discussion about assigning multiple textures to an attribute, see Layered textures.)

This drag-and-drop method of applying a texture is essentially the same as clicking the map icon next to a material’s attribute slider. Using Hypershade offers a faster, more graphical alternative to using the Attribute Editor.
Select Graph > Input and Output Connections to view the node connections for the new texture you created.

Also notice that bumps from the bump map appear in the Orange material’s swatch. The Orange material swatch is the same as the Material Sample that appears in the Attribute Editor for the material node. (The bumps also appear in a rendered image, but not in the scene view.)
Double-click the bump3d1 swatch (the checkered cube) to display its attributes in the Attribute Editor.
This node is the link between the texture and the material. It converts visual information, such as the mottled Brownian pattern, into the appearance of surface relief.

The most important attribute in the bump3d1 node is Bump Depth, which controls the intensity of the bumps.
Change Bump Depth to 0.15. In the Orange swatch or a rendered image, you’ll see that this diminishes the bumps as compared to the default value 1.0.

NoteIf you select Render > IPR Render Current Frame while Hypershade is selected, a message appears: Please select the view you want to render. Either select the perspective view before choosing IPR Render Current Frame, or, in the Render View window, select IPR > Redo Previous IPR Renderer.
In the Hypershade panel, click the brownian1 texture swatch to reveal its attributes. Set the following:
- Increment: 0.3
- Octaves: 4.0
These values produce a rendered image closer to real orange skin.

Our recommendation for these values is based on experimentation. For Brownian and some other textures, it’s usually faster to get desirable results by experimenting with the settings rather than trying to understand the definition of each attribute.